Thanks to the boom in broadband there’s been an equally huge explosion in the amount of sharing of home movies on the Net, so much so most people have a few gigs of memory devoted to such collections.
Thanks to the boom in broadband there’s been an equally huge explosion in the amount of sharing of home movies on the Net, so much so most people have a few gigs of memory devoted to such collections. Most of these have been encoded in DivX or the newer ghetto XviD codecs, making them perfect for watching on a PC, but fairly useless if you want to watch them on a normal DVD player.
Enter KISS and its Linux-based DP-450 DVD player. It looks like a DVD player, acts like a DVD player, but is really something special. It supports playback of movies encoded in DivX 4, 5 and XviD as well as MP3 audio. It’s a terrific concept, and one that can constantly evolve through a simple process of firmware updating using ISO CD images downloadable from KISS’ Website.
To watch DivX movies you need to burn them onto a CD or DVD. The unit can read DVD-R and DVD-RW but lacks support for the competing +R and +RW standards. Most movies will fit on a CD but for that high quality footage of Uncle Neo’s holiday you’ll need larger storage. This is the main problem with this unit. KISS however has a newer player on the way, the DP-500, which adds an Ethernet connector and PC-Link software. It’ll be an infinite improvement for those who have a large collection of visuals on their PC.
There are no complaints about image or audio quality. DivX looks nice and crisp on the TV screen and it is nice to not be tied to the PC all the time. The unit is also region-coded, but a few minutes with Google will be all that’s needed to exert your right to choose what DVDs you watch.
For all the technological wizardry and functionality this unit has, it ends up being hampered by the need to burn everything onto discs. KISS has delivered a nice product but it is worth holding out for the DP-500.
Issue: 137 | June, 2012